Why is it we worry about whether we think other people think we are busy? If someone asks what we’ve been doing, we have to make sure it sounds terribly busy. Too-much-to-do-in-a-day-type busy.

We feel we have to sound like we’ve been too busy to write, or that we’ve been hard at it, just not published yet. A nonwriter usually thinks of writing as synonymous with publishing, and we feel inclined to make it sound like we sweat feverishly over a keyboard 20 hours a day with publishing right around the corner.

Everyone who wants to be busy is busy. But are they productive?

Busy is doing, one minute to the next. Productive, however, is strategic. And productive means you reached a goal, producing something of value.

Do not confuse being busy with being productive. In many cases, the former interferes with the latter.

“A writer writes. Always.” – Billy Crystal in Throw Momma from the Train

That is the first mantra. Once you develop that habit, then you decide what’s considered productive.

Polishing a Harper-Lee-type, once-in-a-lifetime novel is perfectly fine, as long as that is your goal. Some work on the same novel because they are afraid of doing anything else. Some just don’t make the time to write more.

Earning X dollars per month is another type of writing goal.

Writing 1,000 words a day is yet another, with an end game, of course.

The point is we are all busy. But you are the one who decides what you are busy doing and to what end. Nobody else but you.

(14057173 © Gan Hui | Dreamstime.com)